The mortgage is putting a crater in your wallet even though you love having a second home. Many second home owners turn to renting their property as a vacation rental to help defray the costs of ownership. How do you price a vacation home rental without overcharging but making enough to cover your costs? Do your research.

There are other owners of similar sized homes in the area and you can try to find out what they are charging. You can scan the local papers, go online, or even ask a local real estate agent for a price range. eVaca.com is an example of one of the many vacation rental sites you can check out. There are advertisements from owners around the world in these types of sites as well as a list of the weekly rates for the properties.

The time of the year to rent out a property is another important thing to consider. January will be your high time of the year instead of the month of August if you want to rent out a ski lodge in Vermont. If you are going to rent the property in an “off” time of year you will not be able to charge as much as if you were renting the property in a peak time.

The lengths that you want to rent your property for is another thing that you would also like to figure out. In July, a Florida property near the beach will go for top dollar for a week. But in January, that very same property may only attract the snowbirds who want to rent at a lower price and rent it out on a monthly basis. Questions like “is it worth the hassle” or “do I want to mess around with weekend or nightly rentals” are what you would have to answer.

Figure out how many weeks you need to rent your property in order to make a profit or at least pay the bills. What if you need to make $12,000 a year in rental income? When you have looked at the rentals and you saw that a rate of $1,000 a week seems reasonable, then what you need to do is rent the property out 12 weeks a year. Renting out for a few more weeks at a lower rate is what you might want to do in order to make up for the off peak times or if you are unable to get someone to fill every vacant period.

Make sure you won’t forget to spend time in your own home vacation. Defeating the purpose of having that second home is owning the property and not being able to enjoy it.

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